The sickening irony of growth causing death. Cells out of control with multiplication causing subtraction of health.
I've seen it.
A cousin lost as a teenager, the fear of recurrence in the eyes of an imprisoned man. The metastasis to the liver shining bright on a CT scan. My mother finishing up her radiation treatment in Boston.
The phone call that you don't forget.
The scrambling through websites that it prompts.
The numbers, statistics, percentages flying at you like bullets.
Then more irony in the way we fight it. Chemicals and radiation used to fight something perhaps caused by the same. Intangible hope and prayers directed at all-too tangible cells.
The fight that it requires but the calm that it demands.
The way it hits you. And the reaction that collision sets off.
I'm proud of you Mom, et al.
Awesome Fall
8 years ago
Chip,
ReplyDeleteYour piece about cancer is written well. Your grasp of the irony of the disease, your understanding of normal reactions, your personal experience as a cousin, a son, a student doing clinical rotations, are making you into that Physician Assistant with a heart. A heart which feels pain and comprehends fear and will walk with patients who have entered a door they did not choose to enter, who will never go back to life the way it used to be. That will be priceless to your future patients and is priceless right now to me.